Welcome

The title says it all: this blog features physics videos found everywhere on the web: animations, demonstrations, lectures, documentaries.

Please go here if you want to suggest other nice physics videos, and here if I mistakingly infringed your copyrights. If you understand French, you'll find a huge selection of physics videos in French in my other blog Vidéos de Physique.

On Aug. 24, 2014, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and STEREO captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.
This flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares.

Philip Bassindale, a researcher at the University of Bristol, demonstrates acoustic levitation by creating a “pearl necklace” of polystyrene balls in a standing wave of ultrasound. This video was recorded in connection with a Physics World podcast about the nature and applications of ultrasound, which you can listen to here.

Friday, 22 August 2014

The classical physics that we encounter in our everyday, macroscopic world is very different from the quantum physics that governs systems on a much smaller scale (like atoms). One great example of quantum physics’ weirdness can be shown in the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. Josh Samani walks us through this experiment in quantum entanglement.

Thursday, 21 August 2014

MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. (Learn more about these structures: http://bit.ly/1y2E8SX)
Depending on the field's orientation, the microhairs can tilt to form a path through which fluid can flow; the material can even direct water upward, against gravity.

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Astronomers are not only discovering planets around distant suns, they are also starting to measure those worlds with astonishing precision. The diameter of a super-Earth named Kepler 93B is now known to within an accuracy of 148 miles.

Tornadoes are the most violent storms on Earth, with wind velocities that can exceed 200 miles per hour. How do these terrifying cyclones form? Meteorologist James Spann sheds light on the lifespan of tornadoes as they go from supercell thunderstorms to terrible twisters before eventually dissolving back into thin air.

Friday, 8 August 2014

The Higgs boson was discovered in July of 2012 and is generally understood to be the origin of mass. While those statements are true, they are incomplete. It turns out that the Higgs boson is responsible for only about 2% of the mass of ordinary matter. In this dramatic new video, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln tells us the rest of the story.